Inbox: Nov. 5, 2007

Your cover story suggested that the Supreme Court has become increasingly conservative and increasingly irrelevant [Oct. 22]. The first proposition is true; the second is not. The decision to strike down voluntary school integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., would have been significant even if it had affected only a handful of students in those two cities, as your article suggests. In fact, the decision established a new set of constitutional rules that are likely to accelerate the resegregation of urban school districts across the country. Similarly, the decision that Congress could prohibit an abortion procedure...